01679nam a22001817a 4500020001800000041000900018082002500027100002800052245009500080260005200175300001000227504005100237520106700288546001301355650003601368650005701404650003601461  a9781009012294  aeng.  a392.509540904bPAN-S  aPande, Ishita eAuthor.  aSex, Law, and the Politics of Age : bChild Marriage in India, 1891-1937 / cIshita Pande.  aCambridge :bCambridge University Press,c2020.  a340p.  aIncludes bibliographical references and index.  aIshita Pande's innovative study provides a dual biography of India's path-breaking Child Marriage Restraint Act (1929) and of 'age' itself as a key category of identity for upholding the rule of law, and for governing intimate life in late colonial India. Through a reading of legislative assembly debates, legal cases, government reports, propaganda literature, Hindi novels and sexological tracts, Pande tells a wide-ranging story about the importance of debates over child protection to India's coming of age. By tracing the history of age in colonial India she illuminates the role of law in sculpting modern subjects, demonstrating how seemingly natural age-based exclusions and understandings of legal minority became the alibi for other political exclusions and the minoritization of entire communities in colonial India. In doing so, Pande highlights how childhood as a political category was fundamental not just to ideas of sexual norms and domestic life, but also to the conceptualisation of citizenship and India as a nation in this formative period.  aEnglish.  aChild marriagezIndiaxHistory.  aChild marriagexLaw and legislationzIndiaxHistory.  aAge of consentzIndiaxHistory.